[COS] Project: Get In The Giant Robot!! Part 2

Welcome to the cosplay progress post of shame, where in an effort to kick myself in the face for leaving an Evangelion plugsuit to the last few weeks, I try to write about where I’m at in this point in time. Less than two weeks till con? Let’s not think about that too much.

Because I had the basics of the bodysuit figured out, I decided that the next big hurdle would be the plugsuit chest armour. All my nearest and dearest have heard me frustrated about the lack of a working solution, but when it finally comes down to the line — make it work, designers.

The primary issue is one of design vs function, in which the chest armour is obviously made of a molded material of some sort — anime space plastic, or what have you. However, there is no functional shoulder movement built in, as the arm connects directly to the shoulder — effectively caging the entire upper torso. As I didn’t have any flexible plastic or rubber casting experience, it would need to be ruled out for this current project.

That leaves me with a dirty compromise: material (make the chest armour out of layered foam/fabric) or design (break up the uniformity and clean lines of the chest armour). In the end, the lack of an appropriate fabric to emulate the colour and finish pushed me to breaking the upper arm piece from the upper torso.

First step was a basic paper pattern — get the idea and shape of it out as quickly as possible. With a little help from my plastic reference buddy, of course.

Patterning armour is a lot like patterning clothes, so using regular patterns as a base is immensely helpful, especially when pieces are worn like clothes. Once the the paper pattern is roughed out, it gets cleaned up and put together from craft foam — because unlike fabric, armour is rigid and having it conform to the body requires some editing.

(I have a lot of colourful craft foam and I’m not afraid to use it.)

At this point, fit needs to be pretty on point because it’s going to be covered in rigid Worbla next. Because my dressform is so booby, it’s been a bit of a hassle getting fit right — I’ve had to keep some leeway, such as keeping the length of the back variable, but the front chest piece is ready to go to plastic.

One down, a billion more pieces to go. Once this is done, it’ll get generously slathered in wood filler and sanded down smooth for priming and painting.